A Different Kind Of Dinner Party: Why Families Are Talking About Death Over Supper

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By Carolyn O'Hara

On a warm evening in late August, Betsy Trapasso, a 51-year-old former hospice social worker, gathered seven friends at a seafood restaurant in Topanga, Calif., for an unlikely purpose. She wanted to talk about death.

Over the course of the three-hour meal, with the Santa Monica Mountains as a backdrop, the friends discussed losing loved ones, the reasons why people find it so difficult to discuss death and dying, and how they wanted their own lives to end.

One dinner guest had recently become the caregiver for an elderly neighbor. When that neighbor had to be admitted to the hospital, Trapasso’s friend didn’t know if the person had made any decisions about whether to be kept on life support, which prompted much soul-searching. “My friend began thinking about what he wanted when his own time came,” Trapasso recalls.

Trapasso and her friends aren't alone when it comes to discussing end-of-life issues in the open—more and more people across the country are asking each other similar questions. How much medical intervention do I want to keep me alive? Can I afford long-term medical care? Have I made sure that my family won’t be financially burdened by my death? The fact that Americans are living longer than ever before, not to mention that many lack the savings to sustain a long retirement—let alone pricey long-term care—makes it more important than ever to pose these questions.

And, for many people these days, one effective way to share their very personal end-of-life decisions and desires with friends and family is to host "death dinners." The hope is that gathering over a meal will make discussing the topic of dying a little more palatable, while also sparing loved ones from fighting over financial and medical issues down the road.

“Financial issues at end of life cause so many problems and concerns for people,” says Trapasso, who now works as an end-of-life guide. “I have seen people struggle with whether to leave money for their kids or do medical treatments. I've had men ask me if it was cheaper for them to just die, so their wives wouldn’t lose the house. It astonished me.”

Failing to plan or effectively communicate how you’d like to die can have major consequences. Most Americans say that they want to die at home—yet 75% of them do so in hospitals or nursing homes. And a FindLaw survey earlier this year found that less than one in three Americans has a living will, which can leave family members with the onus of having to make decisions about costly medical care.

“We live in a culture where we don’t want to talk about the end of our lives,” says 55-year-old Carole Fisher, chief executive of the Nathan Adelson Hospice in Las Vegas. “We spend so much time working on our health, our careers and our family—but when it comes to the end of our lives, we shy away from [the topic] because it is uncomfortable to talk about it.”

As the head of a hospice, Fisher knows firsthand the importance of communicating end-of-life choices to family and friends. So while she was on vacation at the beach this past August, she gathered 16 friends and relatives over pizza to talk about death and how they’d like to die. To lighten the mood, she passed out adhesive mustaches to the assembled guests, who ranged in age from her 5-year-old grandson to her 74-year-old mother.

The evening had its share of laughter and meaningful moments, but one announcement struck Fisher as particularly useful. “We are of the Jewish faith, and typically you aren’t cremated,” she says. “But my husband was insistent that he wants to be cremated. I knew that, but other family members—like his brother and his sister-in-law—were surprised. So that was helpful: If he goes before I do, and I say that we are cremating him, now there won’t be any pushing back.”

Fisher’s gathering was just one of hundreds of death dinners held in 15 countries around the world on August 24 as part of a project called “Let’s Have Dinner and Talk About Death.” The brainchild of Michael Hebb, a teaching fellow at the University of Washington, the program encourages families and friends to have discussions about death around the dinner table. To help kick-start conversations, DeathOverDinner.org offers talking points, readings and videos about death, as well as invitations for those interested in hosting their own gatherings.

“No one wants to talk about their own mortality,” says Dianne Gray, president of the Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Foundation, a nonprofit focused on end-of-life issues that teamed up with Hebb to promote the dinners. “But if you can show you are doing it out of concern about doing what [family members] want, the safer they will feel.”

Of course, initiating a conversation is a good first step—but it’s also vitally important to formalize any decisions that are made, says Stephany Kirkpatrick, a Certified Financial Planner™ with LearnVest Planning Services. “I might have told my brother that I don’t want end-of-life care,” she says, “but my husband is the one who will be tasked with making health care decisions if I’m incapacitated. He may not agree with my decision, or never heard it, and now all of a sudden we have conflict.”